


Understanding

by thunderbird_dragon



Series: Rescues by International Rescue (rescues themselves and aftermaths) [1]
Category: Thunderbirds, thunderbirds are go
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 04:05:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12950928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunderbird_dragon/pseuds/thunderbird_dragon
Summary: There's a bond between seamen and their vessels so strong that they take stupid risks to keep them safe.International Rescue has been called out to a fishing boat in distress, Gordon and Virgil winch the crew to safety but the skipper refuses to leave, so it's up to Gordon to talk him round, taking risks himself to prove he understands how the man feels.





	Understanding

                                                     

Yes, Gordon understood, all that hurt, that agonising pain the man felt, yes he understood.

For over an hour Thunderbird Two had been hovering over the tormented and tortured trawler.  Standing off just far enough not to be hit by her antenna as she pitched, bow first, deeply into the 40 foot troughs and rose up to their peaks. Virgil hadn’t seen a storm like this of over a year.  But his attention wasn’t on the height of the towering waves or the speed of the wind.  No, it was on the two tiny heat signatures still clinging to the wheelhouse, his fear honing in on one of them.  His kid brother Gordon.

 _“Tell me you’ve got your helmet back on, Gordon!”_   Scott interrupted his thoughts.  “ _Gordon!  Reply to me now!  Have you got your damned helmet back on!”_

“Give him time, Scott!” Virgil was just as worried for his older brother’s stress levels.  This had been a difficult rescue, hadn’t they all been lately?  A trawler in distress in high seas, what was so difficult about that?  Well, the second they airlifted the first crew member aboard TB2, they realised it wasn’t going to be so easy when he voiced his own fears.

“You won’t get the Skipper off!  He won’t see sense.  He’s gone mad!”

Five other crew members then followed through the flight deck hatch, all saying something very similar.

The Skipper of the Evianna had lost his mind.  

Billie White, a trawler-man through and through, was refusing to leave his fishing boat and in the minutes it took Gordon to lift the last crewman off, Billie had locked himself in the wheelhouse.

“Billie, please, you gotta let me in, if only to stop me getting washed overboard myself!”  Gordon pleaded at the door.  “C’mon Billie, please!”  He had tried everything else he could think of, all the sound common sense reasons to open the door, all the sentimental reasons too, like Billie’s wife and family at home. Now Gordon had resorted to pleading.  But Billie knew full well that the young Thunderbird outside in the storm was in no danger, he was on a lifeline from the craft above.  There would be beacons, the finest in the world probably, attached to his uniform, and the whole of International Rescue watching his every move. No, the Thunderbird was in no danger, so Billie turned away and faced fo’ard again.  His hands clasped tightly to the wheel of the Evianna, his fishing boat, his life’s work.

No, he’d not let her go into the darkness on her own.  He’d stay, keep her turned into each and every wall of sea, that way she stood some hope of riding through each wave.  To leave the wheel would be instant death for her, she’d fall broadside on and be overwhelmed by the first wave and disappear from sight forever.

Outside, clung with all his might to the railings beside the wheelhouse door, like some poor little bug on the wing mirror of a speeding car, Gordon had thought he’d heard Scott’s demand for an answer – had he got his helmet back on?  Well no.  He seemed not to connect with the Skipper when he was wearing it.  It was like a barrier to the man, Gordon safe behind the visor, protected from the ripping sea spray that tried to tear Billie’s skin from his face.  Gordon’s eyes weren’t blinded by the harsh salt, his words not wrenched away by the winds.    

So, unprecedented and uncomfortable as it might be, and knowing he’d be in the deepest of trouble when he got home, Gordon had taken the helmet off and now stood pleading with the man barefaced, the full force of the storm hitting him in the way that the Skipper would understand.

Gordon had been washed near horizontal several times, as waves swept over the tiny craft.  The water five foot over his head.  His bared fingers were numb with the cold but he had little choice now but to grasp tighter and in every break, hit the window to get the Skipper attention, try to get him to talk, to give up this lunacy, to allow himself to be rescued.

“Damned idiot!”  Billie had shouted at him, not that Gordon could hear him.  The wind alone was deafening, that added to the sea swell, the spray and the whistling of every stay and aerial, Gordon could hear nothing, not even TB2’s engines. So, despite Scott’s best effort, Gordon was blissfully able to ignore his brother words.

“Awwwe!  Shit!  That’s a big one!”  Billie almost screamed the curse, as a flat surface of terrifying height grew and grew ahead of him.  He held the wheel tight as he reached over for the door latch.  “Get in here you damned fool!”

The door opened only a fraction, Gordon slid in, clamping it shut again with force.  He uttered a simple thank you as he watched the massive wave approach, knowing that he would have had no chance outside.

“Don’t thank me yet, kid! You’d have been better off hightailing it up to your aircraft, not pleading to be in here with me!”  Was Billie mad?  Gordon wasn’t that sure.  

Billie tightened his hold on the wheel.  “Here we go my beauty, c’mon Eva, c’mon now!”

And instantly it was clear to Gordon.  He’d spoken to TB4 in that same voice, coaxing her through something they shouldn’t be able to survive, fearing that it would be their last moments alive together, loving her with all his heart, willing her to bring them both through safely.

“Can… can she do that?” Gordon had been at sea one way or another for years, but the abilities of one tiny trawler against that magnitude of water?  That, he wasn’t so sure of.

Billie shrugged, then turned to the Thunderbird, a wild smile spread across his face.  “Dunno, let’s find out!”  Turning back, he added, “Get over here and give me a hand!”

The force on the rudders was so intense that it took their combined strength to hold her on course. Billie began to yell, no word as such, just an animal instinct scream of encouragement to the inanimate hunk of metal below his feet and in his hands.

What they felt and what Virgil saw were so different.  Virgil reported breathlessly, not actual panic, but something close. “The ship’s gone under!”

Inside the Evianna, there was a sudden drop in the pressure on the wheel as the rudder went loose.  A moment of weightlessness.  A wave of water over them which blotted out the storms sound and gave a surreal light and sound of its own.  

Then the drop.  

Of it all, it was the drop that Gordon probably feared the most.  This was going to hurt, all of them, men and boat.  It seemed to happen in slow motion, the weightlessness gave way to being hurled to the ceiling, joined by loose equipment, including his own helmet broken free of its clip.  The digi-chart board, plotters, fishing kit, bits of knotted rope, coats and boots, anything that wasn’t tied down. Hitting the water at the bottom of the trough was the jolt that threw them in the opposite direction.  Gordon landed on his side, winded, boots landing after him on his head, something heavy across his side.  Whilst below him, he could hear the grating sounds of the Evianna.

Had her keel broken under the strain?  Righting herself, they knew it had.  

Immediately upon his feet, Gordon noted that Billie had clung to the wheel throughout, such was his love for his boat.

“You hurt?” Gordon’s first question.

The Skipper nodded, pointing to his head.  A gash over two inches long spilling bright red down his face and into his eye. “Here take this, I can get a pad to go over it.”

“No need.”  Gordon’s first aid was on his belt and quickest to get to.  He had the dressing held to the older man’s head with seconds, stemming the blood loss. “There, you okay to hold that?”

“No!” Stubborn to the last, the Skipper refused to take a hand from the wheel.

“What is this!”  It wasn’t so much a question as a demand to understand.  Gordon seldom lost his cool but this was beyond him.  Total madness.  There was nothing to be done now but to abandon ship, she was never going to survive now.  They had to leave – and quickly.  

“What the hell is more important than your life!”  Gordon moved around so that he was in front of him.  “I’m risking my life now too, so I deserve to know what is so damned important here?”  He waited, Billie fixed his gaze firmly on the next wave, not so big, not so much of a threat but a worthy opponent nevertheless.

“Okay!”  Gordon tried again fiercely.  “Okay so I get the whole ‘she’s my ship and I won’t let her die’ thing…” He relented a little, yes he did understand that, he really did.  “I’ve got something like her myself, Billie.  She’s worth the world to me, she’s saved my life more times than I care to remember. But if it was a choice between my life and hers, I’d know she’d want me to live…”  He waited for some response.  “Billie?”

The skipper took in a deep slow breath as though strengthening up his stoic resolve.

“I doubt you do understand, not really, lad.”  His words quiet, seemingly untroubled by what was going on around him.

“Try me.”

The oddest of calm came over the wheelhouse, as though for the two, no, for the three of them, time had stood still.  The storm still raged outside, their footing on the deck still dropped away from them then drove up again at alarming angles, the waves still lashed over the wheelhouse. But inside was… calm.

“She’s not just a boat to me, you know?”

Gordon nodded, he did.

“You see, my Grandfather built this one.  He then fished with her until he was in his 80s.  They said he was mad to carry on so long, but…  well, the truth of it was he didn’t trust anyone else with her.  Not even my father I guess.  After him, my father carried on.  She’s become sort of sacred to us, three brothers I have, see? But I was the only one who wanted to carry on, so I learnt trawling, first with my Grandfather then with my own father.”  He had to take a moment, process his own emotions.

Still within the trancelike calm that enclosed them like a warm blanket.

“My father would hate me if I lost her!”  Billie shook his head sadly.  “Never forgive me.  No.” He was talking to himself now as he added. “Sorry Dad, I just don’t think she’s going to survive this one.”

Gordon came to rest a hand across the man’s shoulder.  “He’ll understand.  There is nothing you can do about this, its one hell of a storm.  He’s a trawler-man too.  Talk to him.  He’ll understand.”

But Billie shook his head, “Can’t.  He’s gone too, see.”  Looking out to the west of him, tears welling in the strong man’s face.  “He’s out there somewhere, washed overboard ten years ago now, fighting to keep Evi afloat.”

And there it was, the real truth of the stubborn refusal to give in.

Gordon took a moment himself to bite back his own feelings.  Billie was wrong, Gordon did understand.  He understood it all only too well.  Eventually, once he knew he could say the words without faltering, Gordon tightened the hand on Billie’s shoulder and merely said.  

“Yeah, so is my Dad.”

Billie closed his eyes tight and rocked his head back.  

Of course!  

How could he have been so stupid, so stubborn?  

Of course!  

Jeff Tracy disappeared during a flight over this same ocean.  A hand came off the wheel and clapped over Gordon’s.

“Sorry, yes of course, I knew that.  Sorry.” He blustered awkwardly, Gordon just smiled reassuringly, no offence taken. “Sorry, yes, I think then you really do understand.”

Biting his lip before speaking again, Gordon added, “Dad built my little sub, Thunderbird Four. I’d give my eye teeth for her. But I know Dad wouldn’t want me to give my life.”

The other hand slipped from the wheel.

Billie White was done, any pretence at strength drained away to nothing.  He knew that to be a truth he could not change – his father and grandfather wouldn’t want it of him either.  No, it was time to let her go and join them.  She emitted a rasping noise from the keel and discordant as it was, it seemed she was agreeing with him.

He allowed himself to be moved outside the wheelhouse, allowed the harness to be fitted and clipped to Gordon’s.  Only once the line began to tighten did he speak, urgently.

“Lift your feet off first!”

“Huh?”

“I want to be the last aboard!”

Gordon obliged and was free of the deck a split second before the Skipper of the Evianna.

As they lifted away, she turned as though to watch them go, being sure they were safe.

Then as graceful as a swan she turned in the wave surge again, broadside on, and was enveloped by the breaking wave.  

She didn’t resurface.

She was gone, gone to be with her builder and her trawler-men of old.

Yes, Gordon understood, all that hurt, that agonising pain the man felt, yes he understood.

 

Four days later, Gordon stood up on North Cliff on the island.  All sign of the storms that had raged across the Pacific had now gone. The sky couldn’t have been bluer, the sun warmer.  

And yet the sadness deep within him lingered.

He had expected the rescue to affect him.  It was emotionally charged.  That link to his dad almost too much to bear.  He’d talked it over with each of his brothers separately, it had helped.  But still he ended up at North Cliff, looking out over the sea at the point that they all felt closest to their father.

His father had designed and built most of their equipment, including his helmet.  

It had rolled away out of reach when the Evianna fell through the wave.

It had gone down with her.

Oh, Gordon had the lectures about taking it off, from Scott, John and Grandma but now it lay on the ocean floor inside the wheelhouse of the Evianna.

And somehow, strangely, that felt right, she wasn’t on her own.  His helmet was there to keep her company.


End file.
